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Page v
How to Hunt Birds with Gun Dogs
Bill Tarrant
Page vi
Copyright © 1994 by Bill Tarrant
Published by
STACKPOLE BOOKS
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road,
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania 17055.
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also by Bill Tarrant
Best Way to Train Your Gun Dog
Bill Tarrant's Gun Dog Book: A Treasury of Happy Tails
Hey Pup, Fetch It Up!: The Complete Retriever Training Book
Problem Gun Dogs
Tarrant Trains Gun Dogs
Training the Hunting Retriever: The New Approach
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tarrant, Bill.
How to hunt birds with gun dogs / Bill Tarrant. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8117-0845-4
1. Fowling. 2. Bird dogs. I. Title.
SK313.T37 1994
799.24-dc20 94-10039
CIP
Portions of this book first appeared in Field & Stream, copyright 1986, 1987, 1993 by
Times Mirror Magazines Inc.
All photographs by Bill Tarrant unless otherwise noted
Page vii
This book is dedicated to every bird hunter who ever ripped out the
crotch of his pants caught astraddle a five-strand barbed-wire fence;
took a gun dog into a motel room after the day's hunt and awakened
fumigatingly stunned when it was discovered, overnight, that your
buddy for life had the drizzles; plunged into a nutria hole while wad-
ing to a duck blind in the Mississippi delta; walked across a cottonfield
to go dove hunting and stepped on a rattlesnake; leaped from a pit
blind and ran across a stubblefield yelling at a guy in a truck who left
the road and stole the goose you'd just shot; finally found prairie chick-
ens on top a knoll after hunting all day and fired the over-and-under to
have it double barrel and knock you over backwards; carefully aimed
and fired at the only mallard drake to come in all day and have the shot
erupt in feathers. (Your buddy stayed up all night cramming that
plumage into an empty shell casing and sneaked it into your shotgun
so he could yell, "My God, you undressed him and he's flying away.")
And you've shot into the wind, and all the exploded feathers are set-
tling down on your arms and hat and shoulders; you cannot help but
laugh, though you really want to kill the guy and bury him beneath the
blind.
To have done these things, or ever had a hankering to see men so
discombobulated, this is the book for you. But tell me first, how did you
get out of that motel room without paying for a new carpet?
Page ix
Contents
Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1
8
The Great American Bird Hunting Expedition
2
26
The Ring-necked Pheasant
3
44
Bobwhite Quail
4
65
Gambel's Quail
5
72
Mearns Quail
6
80
Scaled Quail
7
87
California Quail
8
91
Mountain Quail
9
96
Chukar
10
101
Sage Hen
11
107
Blue Grouse
12
113
Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock
13
Doves and Pigeons 121
14
127
Prairie Chickens
15
134
Sharptail Grouse and Hungarian Partridge
16
143
Puddle Ducks
17
156
Divers, Geese, and Brant
Index 171
Page xi
Foreword
Bill Tarrant is the top gun dog writer in America today. When he writes a gun dog book
you can take it to the bank. It's good as gold. Or more to the point, you can take it to the
bird field, for you're going to get into birds.
I know of no other man who has hunted more countries for more different kinds of birds
with more breeds of gun dogs than Bill. It's been his life's love and his life's work.
Rarely do you find a man who can do two things well. But that's Bill. No one has worked
out a better training program for gun dogs or has more savvy in taking man and dog alike
bird hunting. And no one but Bill has the ability to write about it so a man enjoys reading
what he says as well as learning something.
Bill was the first man named Writer of the Year by the Dog Writers Association of
America, and the only dog writer to ever write the story of the year in all media as
judged by the Outdoor Writers Association of America. Each month he speaks to
14,400,000 outdoorsmen from the pages of Field & Stream, and has for twenty-two
years.
There are a ton of books out there to tell you how to train a bird dog and how to take him
hunting, but until you read this book you ain't read none at all.
HOYLE EATON
BOONEVILLE, MISSISSIPPI
WINNER: FOUR NATIONAL BIRD DOG CHAMPIONSHIPS
MEMBER: FIELD TRIAL HALL OF FAME
Page xiii
Acknowledgments
In my writing studio I have a covey of cuties on staff seven female assistants who
among other things:
Bust me out of writer's block by frolicking on my lap;
Soothe me with the warmth of their bodies when quail call in the hollow and deadlines
will not let me slip away;
Kiss my cheek when the computer eats two chapters;
And cuddle with me in the La-Z-Boy as daylight approaches and the fingers can type no
more.
Therefore, I reward these gals for their endless years of devotion, love, and affection.
They are Muffy, Sugar, Candy, Chili, Tiffy, Puddin, and Punk.
Six Lhasa Apsos and a Westie
Who in all their lives have never been more than a whistle away.
Page 1
Introduction
This is a gunpowder-smoked, mud-clad, lifetime-proven, bird-hunter's help book. A
hands-on, frayed-cuff, gun-stock-scarred-and-bluing-rubbed-off, no-nonsense book
about hunting, gun dogs, and North American gamebirds.
Read this book and you'll get your dog into birds and birds in your bag. Read this book
and your kids will figure any meat on the table that ain't got shot in it is not fit to eat, for
it's a road kill. Read this book and you'll have earned pride, and yes, joy, to last the rest of
your life. For you'll be doing what God put you on earth to do, with a dog He built just
special for the job.
But don't think this book will further any game-hog notion that if they fly they die. Just
the opposite. In this book we harvest only what we eat. And we don't necessarily shoot
for the limit.
As a young man I left the arena of man and holed up on a bit of land with an 18-acre
pond. I hung my waders in the mud room, built a holding kennel just outside the door (in
which I put two retrievers brought across the creek each night from the main kennel), and
bought an automatic coffee pot with a timer so the brew would be ready as I reached the
kitchen.
Then the alarm would ring, I'd pull on wool socks, head down the stairs, fill my thermos
with coffee, don waders over my PJs, grab my
